Feminism in the Workplace

Many steps have been taken to advance the status of women in the workplace since the beginnings of the feminist movement.

Once such example is when the 1961 Omnibus Bill was passed in Canada, which granted many new rights to women and came as the result of the preceeding Canadian Royal Comission on the Status of Women

The commission examined the status of women in the Canadian workplace and made several recommendations which were implemented by his administration, such as ensuring that “marital status” and “gender” could not be used as grounds for discrimination by employers, that training programs be made more readily available to women, that pensions for women were made available and that affordable daycare was established. This committee was chaired by Florence Bird, an advocate for women’s rights in Canada.

Similar actions were taken by John F. Kennedy in the United States during the 1960’s, as many of his policies were geared around improving the status of women in society. The Kennedy administration took steps to increase the role of women in society, as outlined in his New Frontier legislations, among which included the establishment of The President’s Commission of the Status of Women advisory commission, which was tasked with documenting employment policies for women in the workplace, with a strong focus on examining the laws surrounding hours and wage in comparison to males. The final report, American Women, was released in 1963 and made several recommendations such as changing hiring practices to be more fair to women workers, paid maternity leave, and equal pay. This led Kennedy to sign the Equal Pay Act in 1963 in hopes of eliminating existing forms of sex-based pay discrimination.